Immersive Virtual Reality in Higher Education : (A Systematic Review of the Scientific Literature)

This article analyses the state-of-the-art of virtual reality (VR) in higher education and provides an overview of the VR literature and identifies the need for the definition of key terms. Thus, it introduces three types of VR according to immersion level. Furthermore, analysis reveals a lack of systematic literature reviews (SLRs) on learning using immersive virtual reality (IVR). This article presents the results of the first SLR of the scientific literature on IVR in higher education indexed in Web of Science. A total of 291 articles were collected out of which 50 were selected for full-text analysis. We report three findings. First, we categorise and cluster the literature into formal aspects and research design and conclude that IVR research remains in its infancy. Furthermore, it lacks a sound and standardised research framework and design as well as comparative studies that are repeated for validation. Second, we analyse and discuss the current results and outcomes of the scientific research and identify the diversity of the reported research and learning outcomes with contradictory results, which are frequently due to specific and isolated scenarios. Third, this work is the first systematic scoping review on all studies from Web of Science that focuses on the use of IVR in higher education in general. We offer a unique overview of scientific articles on IVR in higher education without any limitation in time, scope or topic. Notably, the majority of the 50 articles do not present evidence-based and validated results; in particular, discussions and results related to pedagogical aspects are lacking.